Ronald Weasley's dress robes

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Contents

History

Like everything else Ron owned they were second-hand. Ron's mother bought them at a second-hand shop.[1]

In the summer of 1994, Ron discovered his robes. He insisted that his mum had accidentally given him Ginny's robes, but Molly declared that they were his.

Ron's look of horror at seeing his appearance in the mirror

During the school year of 1994, it became necessary for students attending Hogwarts to own a pair of dress robes for the Yule Ball, which was held on the night of Christmas Day. As the Weasley family was poor, Ron Weasley had to make do with second-hand robes. The old robes were given to Ron, who showed much reluctance to wear them, even going as far to make Molly Weasley suggest him to go naked and have Harry Potter get a photograph.

After getting dressed for the ball, in a desperate attempt to make his robes look more "manly", he used a severing charm on the ruff and cuffs which eliminated the lace but he did not do a very neat job and the edges ended up frayed looking.

Ron's date to the ball was Padma Patil, who was unhappy to be seen with him because his robes were so hideously embarrassing. Several others stared and laughed at the robes. Ron and Padma did not dance at all once at the ball, though this was also because Ron spent most of it jealously watching Hermione Granger dance with Viktor Krum. Padma ended up abandoning Ron in favour of a boy from Beauxbatons.

Later in the year, Harry gave Ron's brothers, Fred and George his Triwizard Tournament earnings of 1000 Galleons in order to help them start their joke shop, and semi-jokingly asked them to buy Ron a new pair of dress robes. So, out of gratitude, they honoured his request, and Ron soon had a newer, more attractive set of dress robes.[2]

Behind the scenes

According to Pottermore, wizarding clothing has "remained outside of fashion", with dress robes supposedly only having undergone small alterations since the 17th century. This does not correlate with Ron having dress robes so drastically different from "modern" robes, especially given Draco's comment that they may have been fashionable in 1890.